


Tell Me Something New

by movies_michelle



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Comment Fic, First Time, M/M, books are sexy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 00:34:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12200421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/movies_michelle/pseuds/movies_michelle
Summary: A bored Flint is never a good thing.





	Tell Me Something New

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dorinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/gifts).



> Commentfic posted to LJ April 2017 in response to a prompt by Dorinda. Set somewhere in the time between 3rd and 4th season.

They'd been waiting for Billy to reach their rendezvous point for the better part of 10 minutes, and Silver was about to go insane. Not from the waiting, but from _Flint _waiting.__

__It was, admittedly, an incredibly boring place to wait. Safely outside of Nassau, the house was abandoned by whichever merchant who thought it best to leave while he could, it was a good choice for a rendezvous. Unfortunately, it had been cleaned out almost entirely by its former tenants, which meant that not only was there no furniture, but Silver had found only one item in the entire house._ _

__As Flint made another pacing turn, glaring at the door as if it offended him personally, John sighed and said in the sweetest, most subservient voice he could muster from where he was sitting on the floor, "Captain. Sir. Would you please sit down before I shoot you?"_ _

__Flint stopped in his tracks and slowly turned, eyebrow raised, to look at Silver._ _

__Fortunately he looked more amused at the notion of his quartermaster shooting him than anything, so Silver pressed his point by giving his most obnoxious smile and batting his lashes before adding, "Please?"_ _

__Flint snorted, but thankfully also finally sat next to Silver where he leaned against the wall near the door._ _

__Unfortunately drumming fingers soon began, so Silver felt it past time to use his secret weapon._ _

__"A present for you, Captain," he said, and pulled out the volume he'd found and stuffed into his pocket. He intended to give the encyclopedia volume to Flint later, possibly with some long tale of procuring it, but needs must._ _

__Flint snorted again, but took the book, and Silver leaned back with a relieved sigh, and prayed that Billy would come well before Flint tired of his distraction._ _

__Flint put the book down on the ground between them._ _

__"Not up to your standards?" John asked, eyebrows raised._ _

__"It's in Italian," Flint gritted out through his teeth._ _

__John rolled his eyes and picked up the book, opening it at random. "The Hanging Gardens of Babylon," he began reading._ _

__Flint looked at him with astonishment. "You can read Italian?" he asked, sounding dubious._ _

__John smiled again at him, all brightness and teeth, reminiscent of the charming smile he'd once used on people, and the one John knew most irritated the piss out of Flint. "I am a man of many talents."_ _

__Flint rolled his eyes, so John just continued._ _

__"'The Gardens of Babylon, or Semiramis were ranked by the ancients among the wonders of the world....'" He finished the entry, and was just going on to knee-joints, when Flint interrupted him again._ _

__"So, are you just going to read to me while we wait?" he asked, possibly not as snide as John would have expected._ _

__Still, John sighed heavily before looking up again. "Well, it's either that," he said conversationally, "or I beat you to death with it. Since we might still need you for future plans..."_ _

__Flint bared his teeth in something that may have been a smile on another man, but was on him purely predatory. John had seen that look before, normally when Flint's face and teeth were covered in blood, his and other people's._ _

__That look used to scare him, likely still should have, but John knew that, to at least a certain point, it was irritation not anger propelling him, and a sincere hatred of inaction. Irritation John could deal with._ _

__Flint said nothing further, so John continued to read._ _

__It wasn't fast going: John had to concentrate, as he'd not had to read and translate so much so quickly in a long time. But he made it through and became a little absorbed in a number of entries._ _

__John had just finished with the definition of joy, and it's rather grim conclusion, when he realized Flint had not made a sound in quite a while, and chanced a glance up._ _

__Flint was staring off into the distance, head tilted back against the wall. He had a slight, sad smile on his face, as if he was remembering something else._ _

__"I had a friend once," he started quietly, then stopped, before glancing over at John quickly, then looking away before starting again. "Thomas used to love reading out loud. So did Miranda, though she did it more after we left London."_ _

__John stayed silent, barely letting himself breathe, and let the moment stretch out. He knew speaking at all would likely stop Flint in his tracks._ _

__"I thought at first he merely loved to hear the sound of his own voice. Arrogant aristocrat, convinced of his own brilliance," he continued, his voice dripping with affection John knew he never let himself show. Which Flint had no one to show it to. "But I soon figured out it was his way--and Miranda's, too--of showing love for those words and wanting so much for some people, certain people, to love them just as much as he did. To see and hear them the way he did."_ _

__John sat and listened, hoarding these bits of Flint. He felt the odd combination he always did when Flint spoke of the Thomas Hamilton: greed for the information, a distant sort of pride in knowing that Flint only shared these things with him these days, and a pang of something he would not name._ _

__Flint snorted, as if laughing at himself, and looked over at John with a small smile._ _

__"Of course, he was also an arrogant aristocrat," he said with a smile of such affection, John hardly knew what to do with it._ _

__John would never be able to admit to himself why, in that moment, he leaned forward, other than that the pang at Flint's smile had grown and he wanted Flint here and now with him, not in some long-lost past with a dead man._ _

__So John leaned forward, aware enough to do it slowly in case he was wrong about what Flint's reaction would be. When his lips touched Flint, John opened them just slightly, kissing firmly enough to not seem timid, but not hard enough to feel like an assault. Flint didn't pull back, but he didn't try to deepen the kiss either. He held still, allowing John to continue the kiss, even as John raised his hand to Flint's chest, fisting his shirt to hold him close._ _

__When John pulled away, he did so only by inches, just far enough to see Flint's eyes on him, intent, and waited to see how Flint would respond._ _

__Flint tilted his chin up, the faintest smile on his lips, but he did not pull further away. "You have shit timing, Silver," he said plainly, though he leaned forward for a much more...in-depth kiss._ _

__John would have no idea later how long they were there, but when he heard the door open, he found the belt around his hips had been undone, and he had to scramble for his gun._ _

__"Fuck," Billy proclaimed, and turned his back on them in shock. John would have found it funny at almost any other time, if he wasn't both frustrated and flustered himself._ _

__"Not quite," Flint said casually, and while his tone sounded unmoved, when John turned his head back to look at him, Flint grabbed him by the neck to pull him forward again for one last, toothsome kiss. When Flint released him, he pulled back and said just loud enough for John's ears, "Absolute shit."_ _

__Which sounded oddly like a promise to John._ _

__Flint quickly sprang to his feet and offered John a hand up from the floor. "What news do you have?" he asked Billy, all business._ _

**Author's Note:**

> In case you were wondering, the book I was imagining John reading from is a volume of the _Encyclopedie_ , written and published by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, translations of which are now online [here](https://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/). I acknowledge the anachronism of the fact that the first part of it wasn't published until the mid-1700s, so well after the setting of _Black Sails_ , but it's such a self-indulgent, witty bit of Enlightenment writing, it's worth the jiggery with time.


End file.
